{"id":319418,"date":"2025-12-02T00:15:12","date_gmt":"2025-12-02T00:15:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/319418\/"},"modified":"2025-12-02T00:15:12","modified_gmt":"2025-12-02T00:15:12","slug":"toro-arquitectos-designs-ring-shaped-ciales-kindergarten-in-puerto-rico","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/319418\/","title":{"rendered":"Toro Arquitectos designs ring-shaped Ciales Kindergarten in Puerto Rico"},"content":{"rendered":"

An outdoor play area sits at the heart of this ring-shaped concrete kindergarten<\/a> in Puerto Rico<\/a>, designed by local studio Toro Arquitectos to create “a safe, engaging, and functional environment” for children. <\/p>\n

Ciales Kindergarten replaces a former funeral home, which was transformed by Toro Arquitectos<\/a> and extended with a circular structure alongside it.<\/p>\n

\"AerialThe Ciales Kindergarten’s ring-shaped form surrounds a central outdoor play area<\/p>\n

The “unremarkable” existing building was turned into office spaces, while the new concrete ring houses the children’s learning and play facilities.<\/p>\n

“The Ciales Kindergarten will fill an immediate need for early childhood education in Ciales and surrounding municipalities in central Puerto Rico,” said the studio. “Forty-eight children will benefit from this new facility.”<\/p>\n

\"AnThe overhanging concrete roof shelters outdoor circulation from Puerto Rico’s weather<\/p>\n

Located in the Manat\u00ed River valley and nestled against towering limestone-karst cliffs, the two buildings sit in stark contrast to one another.<\/p>\n

“We stripped all superficial decorative motifs from the existing building to intensify its condition of ‘background building’, allowing the new school to become the protagonist,” Toro Arquitectos said.<\/p>\n

\"PlayConcrete walls inside the classrooms and play areas are offset by colourful flooring and equipment<\/p>\n

The concrete ring’s diameter aligns perfectly with the edge of the older building, and the structure is divided into 12 equal segments<\/p>\n

Its shape maximises the 360-degree views outward, while creating a private and protected area for the kids inside.<\/p>\n

\"ClassroomClassrooms share outdoor play spaces around the building’s perimeter<\/p>\n

“This design strategy not only responds to the site’s natural beauty but also fosters a safe, engaging, and functional environment for the children and staff alike,” said Toro Arquitectos.<\/p>\n

Around the exterior, board-formed concrete walls are punctuated by doorways and large openings covered with vertical louvres that provide shade and obscure views inward.<\/p>\n

\"ConcreteBrightly hued louvres shade the outdoor spaces and obscure views from the exterior<\/p>\n

The six classrooms all face inward and open onto the central courtyard, where circles of green astroturf and colourful equipment form a play area.<\/p>\n

A large overhang of the roofline creates outdoor circulation that’s protected from Puerto Rico’s tropical weather \u2013 offering both shade from the sun and shelter from the rain.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Gy\u00f6ngyszem<\/p>\n

Archikon updates prefabricated 1960s kindergarten to be “playful and liveable”\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/a><\/p>\n

Pairs of classrooms share three additional smaller outdoor play spaces around the perimeter, and another segment is also dedicated to communal play.<\/p>\n

Smoothed concrete surfaces are left exposed across the walls inside, enlivened by brightly hued flooring, tiles and soft furnishings.<\/p>\n

\"Ring-shapedThe concrete building is divided equally into 12 segments and is punctuated by doorways<\/p>\n

“The irony of a funeral home’s site becoming an early childhood development center was ever-present throughout the design process,” Toro Arquitectos said.<\/p>\n

“As we decided on a circular scheme to distinguish the school from the existing building, creating a dialogue between the two, we realised that the circular form had, inadvertently, become a metaphor for the cycle of life.”<\/p>\n

\"ViewThe new building joins an existing rectilinear structure, which was converted from a funeral home into offices<\/p>\n

Architecture for early learning is ideally playful and experimental to foster joy and stir up young imaginations.<\/p>\n

A colour-blocked creche<\/a> in France, a nursery patterned with animal shapes<\/a> in Italy, and a facility decorated to resemble the sea and sky<\/a> in Australia are amongst other recently completed examples.<\/p>\n

The photography is by Paola Quevedo Santos<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Project credits:<\/p>\n

Team: Jos\u00e9 Javier Toro, Gast\u00f3n Saboulard, Luis Rodriguez, Gabriela Ennich
Structural: Miguel Zapata
Electrical: Alfonso L\u00e1zaro, Requena y Asociados
Mechanical: Jorge Led\u00f3n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An outdoor play area sits at the heart of this ring-shaped concrete kindergarten in Puerto Rico, designed by…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":319419,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[76,354,355,49,48,11147,356,549,75,79808,29522,49626,49627,183],"class_list":{"0":"post-319418","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-and-design","8":"tag-arts","9":"tag-arts-and-design","10":"tag-artsanddesign","11":"tag-ca","12":"tag-canada","13":"tag-concrete","14":"tag-design","15":"tag-education","16":"tag-entertainment","17":"tag-kindergartens","18":"tag-puerto-rico","19":"tag-sectionall","20":"tag-sectionarchitecture","21":"tag-usa"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/319418","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=319418"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/319418\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/319419"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=319418"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=319418"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=319418"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}